Decor store moves to Quonset door

NORTH KINGSTOWN – The Shops at Quonset Point, at the gateway to the redeveloped former Navy base, is adding a major anchor store at the corner nearest Post Road.
The New Boston Fund, Inc., a Boston-based private equity real estate investment, development and management firm, has leased 22,000 square feet of retail space to HomeGoods, Inc., a popular national chain featuring discounted interior design products and accessories.
A HomeGoods outlet located for many years in the Kingstown Plaza on Post Road in the north end of town, will close and move to the upscale Quonset location. A HomeGoods logo has already been affixed to a tower on the enormous space with opening scheduled for fall.
It joins two other anchors, Kohl’s and Dave’s Fresh Marketplace, as well as Verizon, Subway, Supercuts, Central Nails and Sally Beauty.
Gary Hofstetter, senior vice president and Northeast regional director of the New Boston Fund, says, “We’re very excited about them [HomeGoods]. It’s a great win for the center; we’re thrilled to have them.”
The developer used Jeff Arsenault of CBRE Grossman, a company of retail advisers, to broker the deal with HomeGoods, which was represented by Philip Kling. It came to fruition, Hofstetter says, because “major retailers all talk to the same brokers.” He notes that the plaza is “pretty close to full.”
In fact, the HomeGoods store is so vast – it’s taking the entire end corner – that Central Nails and Supercuts were moved slightly east to accommodate the new anchor. “We just flipped it overnight,” Hofstetter says of the speedy relocation.
The Shops at Quonset Point is a 400,000-square-foot development. New Boston acquired the property in May 2005 and construction began in January 2008. Before it was even finished, nearly 66 percent of the space was pre-leased.
The New Boston Fund has developed or acquired commercial and residential properties with a cumulative market value of about $4.4 billion, including 23 million square feet of commercial real estate and 7,500 residential units.

Martha Smith is an award-winning journalist and author. Retired, she is an independent contractor for SRIN.